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Thick Hare Soup

A hearty soup made from hare, ham, onion, celery, herbs, and broth, thickened with meat and flavored with Harvey's sauce, port wine, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Thick Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the soup

  1. Place the hare pieces in a large jar with ham, onion, celery, sweet herbs, and boiling water, then cover the jar.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 3 hours or simmer on the stove for the same time.

  3. Strain the liquid and remove the meat from the bones.

Finish and serve

  1. Pound the meat and mix it back into the soup until thick.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil and add Harvey's sauce, port wine, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Serve with forcemeat balls made from chopped liver.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Port wine + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat and rich flavour of the soup.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth during the long cooking.
Onion
Builds aromatic sweetness and flavour as it cooks slowly in the liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and fruity aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Pounding and thickening the meat. Pounded meat broken into fine particles releases starch and protein into the liquid, which thickens the soup. Adding it while the soup is too thin or too hot can leave it grainy or watery, so it should be stirred in until the soup reaches the desired thickness.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, sauce, port wine, pepper, liver):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, sauce, port wine, pepper, liver. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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